Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

Charles Effinger Smoot, 91, a former assistant general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission and co-founder of the Ski Club of Washington, D.C., died Sept. 23 at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda of respiratory failure.

Born in Staunton, Va., Mr. Smoot moved to the District in 1917 and lived in Washington until shortly before his death. He graduated from Central High School in 1926 and for the next decade worked for the Agriculture and Interior Departments.

They all look very nicely dressed and elegant, the 20s were really a high point in fashion, very timeless. What they are wearing wouldn't look too much out of place even today. Also, the young men's suits are really nicely tailored, and the young woman is elegant without being gaudy.

Charlie Smoot looks like the little boy in the shot called "Meet the Smoots." I suspect he's the youngest child, on the far right.

[He's a bit young to be the boy in the 1910 photo. Charlie was a student (and cheerleader) at Central High when this photo was made in 1925. Senator Smoot, whose sons were Harold, Harlowe and Ernest (probably the boy in the sailor suit), did have a grandson named Charles, born around 1917. - Dave]

These three were all Central High students when pictured here. I have yet to find the common thread that links them all.

[As in aside, my first association with the name Smoot is not the Smoot-Hawley act (a.k.a. Hoot-Smalley) but rather the non-standard unit of measure for the length of the Harvard Bridge connecting Cambridge to Boston: 364.4 Smoots. One Smoot equating to 67 inches.]

Charles Edward Widmayer, a founder of Editorial Projects for Education, which published the weekly Chronicle of Higher Education, and for 30 years the editor of the Dartmouth College Alumni Magazine, died Thursday at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon, N.H. He was 83 years old. He died from acute respiratory failure, the family said.

Mr. Widmayer, a native of Washington, graduated cum laude from Dartmouth in 1930. After a year's graduate study at Harvard, he returned to Dartmouth and Hanover, N.H., where he lived for the rest of his life. He taught English at Dartmouth in 1932-33 and served as director of athletic publicity in 1933-1934. He joined the staff of the Dartmouth Alumni magazine in 1933. In 1957, he became a founding member of Editorial Projects.

Surviving are his wife, Alene G. Potter Widmayer, to whom he had been married for 53 years, and two sons, Frederick P. and Martin G. Widmayer.

Margaret is quite attractive, given the lack of modern makeup, and seems to be wearing a sort of knowing smirk. Mr. Smoot is rather dashing in a wealthy sort of way. But Margaret is leaning toward Mr. Widmayer, isn't she. Hmmmm.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.